The Gathering of Friends is a strange kind of event at times.  You often find yourself playing games you never expected to with people you never expected to.  That was kind of the theme yesterday, as I opened the day by playing a children’s dexterity game with Friedemann Freese.  

I was then pulled into playing a secret prototype by HUCH! & friends.  I’m not confident I’ve ever played a game from this publisher, but this one was interesting.  It had a neat central mechanism and enough going on to keep four hardcore gamers well-engaged.

Sometime after that, I played a new CGE word-game prototype.  

I’m not permitted to say much about it, but it was fun and hard and I played it a second time yesterday.  Could be something I buy when it eventually comes out.

From there, I was introduced to Matt Leacock, designer of Pandemic, and we played two of his current prototypes: one dice game and one coop.  Sadly, I can’t share pictures or much detail at this stage, but both were very fun. I laughed quite a bit. 

That somehow led me to my playing me first Peter Hawes game, Royals.  That one is published, but I forgot to take a picture, partly because I was not terribly enamored with the game.  One player at the table was very frustrated with both the randomness and his seating position in a five-player game.

After some small fillers and a long delicious dinner, I tried a light Rudenger Dorn game that was a decent time-waster, and then somehow found myself playing miniature versions of ping-pong and racquetball (don’t even ask for the latter). 

The only thing expected about the game was how it finished: with several hours of Times Up!  Here’s Stephan Brissaud, Chief Operating Officer of IELLO, as Truman Capote at 4 am